The victory

by Molly Elliot Seawell

As he had said, it was easy enough to make it appear that Angela, under his protection, was seeking her husband; but Angela herself, how should he tell her, what words could he use to soften it? Ah, there was no softening it! And suppose she should refuse to go? She was an impulsive creature, knowing little of the world, full of rash courage, and the last woman on earth to sit calmly under a charge of treachery. And if she went quietly it would be to go to Neville Tremaine’s arms, and he, Isabey, would be the one to send her to that haven. He would never see her again, of that he felt quite sure; nor could he bear to see her as Neville Tremaine’s wife. In one more day, one day of shame and wretchedness, he would be forever parted from Angela.

Isabey was no more generous in his love than are most men. He wanted Angela’s sweet society for himself, and grudged every look and word she might give her husband. He realized what Angela did not—that all those sweet confidences, however innocent, between Isabey and herself, that turning to him always for his opinion, that delicious intimacy of the soul between them, must come to an end when Angela held her real position as a wife.

Angela, in a way, was as novel to Isabey as he was to her. He had never, under the social customs in New Orleans, been thrown into a close and unguarded intimacy with any woman as with her. Her heart and mind had been like a volume of poetry open before him, and he had read on, pleased, touched, amused, reverencing, and surprised. She knew so much in some ways and so little in others. The thing of which she knew least, but could feel most, was love. If she had possessed more guile or even more knowledge of herself, she would never have slipped into that soft, sweet intercourse with Isabey. All of them, the whole Harrowby family, were the most guileless people that Isabey had ever known. The mere saying of the words which made Angela the wife of Neville Tremaine on the wharf that April night at Harrowby was confidently felt, not only by the Harrowby family, but by the whole community, to put her definitely and forever out of the reach of any other man than her husband. Such a thing as a flirtation with a married woman had never been heard of among those patriarchal people. They had never known anything between the perfect dignity of a wife and the bottomless pit of degradation into which, once in a hundred years, a woman sometimes fell to be lost forever in the abyss.

“Wherever divorce is unknown, and the honor of women is protected by men with arms in their hands, this state of society must result,” thought Isabey, as he plodded along through the rain back to his tent, and he would be the last person in the world to wish this unwritten law changed. He would rather have died than speak a word of open love to Angela. But love speaks without words, and to people more worldly-wise than these simple Virginian country gentry Isabey’s secret might have been suspected long ago.

When he reached his tent he rolled himself in his blanket and lay down in the darkness, not to sleep, but to dream, to think, to suffer torments. The waking hours of a night are usually long, but when the rosy dawn crept in, Isabey thought it was the shortest night he had ever spent.

The October morning was of an exquisite softness. The Indian summer had come, that time of mellow sunshine, of faint blue mists upon the uplands, of caressing winds among the fading leaves when summer turns back, as it were, for a last farewell. Old Euripides said, in the long ago, “In all fair things, the autumn, too, is fair.”

Isabey left camp about seven o’clock in the morning, so that he might allow his horse a long rest before reaching Harrowby, for after that there might be hard riding. He had settled the details of how he should convey Angela to the Federal lines. So good a horse-woman as she could easily ride the twenty miles over the level road. It would be better, however, that the journey be made at night. The season was mild and the moon was at its full, so that there would be no hardship involved. But Isabey recognized that it would be just as well that they should not be seen together riding upon the highway a long distance from Harrowby.

When he reached the Federal lines, he would, of course, be obliged to leave her. He apprehended no trouble for her; there were gentlemen among the Federal officers who would readily assume charge of a brother officer’s wife. It was all simple enough, only it broke Isabey’s heart.

As he rode soberly along through the blue-and-gold October morning he kept a moderate pace and it was quite eleven o’clock before he reached the place where he meant to rest his horse. It was in the little glade in the woods where he remembered to have walked with Angela and Richard Tremaine and Lyddon the first spring afternoon he ever met Angela, almost a year and a half before. Then it had been springtime; now it was autumn, and the dead leaves were thick underfoot.

Isabey dismounted, took the saddle off his horse, and sat down on the same fallen tree where he had sat with Angela. He was not equal to much exercise on foot, and sat quite still, living over the past with Angela and dreading the interview that lay before him.